Imaging the healing heart( Being able to visualize the healing of ...)

Being able to visualize the healing of damaged tissue after a heart attack is vital for obtaining appropriate therapies for heart patients. Albert Sinusas and colleagues, from Yale University School of Medicine, have now developed a noninvasive method for imaging this process.

Following a heart attack, new blood vessels are formed during the healing and remodeling process. In order to encourage healing, therapies for post-heart attack recovery have focused on enhancing factors that induce new blood vessel growth, but evaluation of the efficacy of these strategies is difficult due to the lack of accurate means to measure the thera-peutic effect. Now, Sinusas and colleagues, by radioactively labeling a protein that is present specifically in newly developing blood vessels (a protein called avB3 integrin), have found they could actually track the process of blood vessel growth in the hearts of rat and canine heart-attack models using standard tomography methods.

By taking multiple, timed images of the heart, the authors could detect changes in the presence of the marker-protein in the areas damaged during the heart attack. They found that this marker specifically increased in these damaged areas as new blood vessels developed, and allowed clear view of changes in the damaged area over time. Since this method is both non-invasive and uses standard imaging technology, it is an ideal new tool for monitoring changes of damaged areas in patients after a heart attack and during therapeutic trials of potential drugs to enhance such healing.

'"/>

Contact: Laurie Goodman
press_releases@the-jci.org
212-342-4159
Journal of Clinical Investigation
15-Jun-2004

Page: 1
Related biology news :

1. Imaging study shows brain maturing
2. Imaging the brain solving problems through insight
3. Imaging technique reveals new structure in retinal cells
4. Imaging technique discovered at Stanford monitors cancer cell proliferation
5. Imaging technique may help in confirming, monitoring treatment of malignant brain tumors
6. Imaging study provides new information on how the brain processes sounds of different tones
7. Imaging apparatus characterizes drops in dirty laboratory environments
8. New Imaging Technique Pinpoints Dead Heart Muscle
9. Imaging Studies Illuminate Brains Response To Cocaine
10. Bone marrow cells routinely help with wound healing
11. Social benefits of wound healing may not make any difference in animals with multiple partners